Welcome to the Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies

The Stahl Center serves the UWM campus and the Milwaukee community with courses and public events covering a wide variety of topics in the field of Jewish Studies. Our courses range in time from the biblical period to the present, and embrace disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences, including history, literature, theatre, film, cultural studies, Hebrew language, and religion. UWM offers a major and minor in Jewish Studies.

The Center for Jewish Studies was initially established with generous grants from the Helen Bader Foundation, the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, and the Andrew Scher Fund, which were matched by UWM. A generous gift from the Baye Foundation made possible the renovation of the Stahl Center's beautiful new facility: the historic Greene Museum on the eastern perimeter of the campus. The Greene Museum houses core Jewish Studies faculty and administrative staff, and includes a flexible-use space for meetings, workshops, student use, and public events.

Joint Statement on the “Muslim Ban”

Jewish Studies Programs
University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

We, the undersigned Jewish Studies faculty and affiliate faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, join together to condemn the Trump Administration’s executive order banning immigration from seven countries—also known, for good reason, as the “Muslim ban.”

Our experience as Jewish Studies scholars and teachers compels us to speak out against the demonization of members of another religion—a phenomenon all too familiar in Jewish history. Some of the most powerful texts we teach instruct us to welcome the stranger and look after others, from all religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.

The fact that some of us are but a generation removed from our own families’ experience in the Holocaust deepens our outrage at this administration’s efforts to slam doors against innocent refugees seeking the shelter of America’s freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. The fact that the ban was issued on International Holocaust Memorial Day, an occasion to remember the extremes to which racism and xenophobia can lead, adds cruel irony to the turmoil unleashed by the decree.

Our two institutions currently host hundreds of students, faculty, and staff from the seven nations targeted by this executive order. These people enrich our campuses, they broaden our understanding, and their talents and hard work contribute to the international reputation the University of Wisconsin has earned. We are proud to call them our students, colleagues, and friends. We implore you to consider the ways that not only these immigrants contribute to our scholarship and service, but to learn from the ways immigrants have done so throughout this country’s history.